One Line Sky, Clinging Vines

The statue gave no further response.

It had not finished what it was saying.

I grew anxious and, ignoring the strange looks from Ying Gou and Ye Jinghong, pressed on, "But what?"

The statue still did not respond, as though it had never spoken at all.

"Jiang Xiaobai, what's wrong?" Ye Jinghong lightly touched me and asked.

I gave a bitter smile. I knew that if I told them I had been talking to the statue just now, they would definitely think something was wrong with my head. I found it strange too—why could they not hear it? Why was I the only one able to interact with the statue like this?

Ying Gou said, "Could it be that you've formed some kind of connection with it?" His gaze fell on the statue ahead. I nodded slightly without denying it.

Ying Gou frowned. "What did it say?"

After thinking for a moment, I said, "It told me about time. It said time here has come to a standstill. In other words, time has not truly moved forward in this place—it stopped. More precisely, time stopped after we entered that little building. That is why we were able to encounter ourselves in that house."

Time had stopped at a single point. All of us who reached that point in time would remain here. In other words, that little building was the current endpoint for every version of us that appeared on this small island at different times.

Ye Jinghong seemed to understand. "So what we need to do now is get time moving again and break this stagnation. Only then can what should move forward continue forward, and all of us on the different timelines return to our own points in time."

I nodded. That was more or less what the